


my best judgment signed its resignation

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. She bolts. The irony of it bubbles in her throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my best judgment signed its resignation

She bolts.

The irony of it bubbles in her throat.

 

-

 

 

"You've got to appreciate the symmetry of it," the man she didn't leave, the one that followed her anyways, says from somewhere behind her. They're sitting back to back in the lobby of some flashy hotel on the strip and, all things considered, this isn't where she imagined she'd be two days ago.

"Are you like high all the time now?" She asks.

"Maybe."

 

 

-

 

 

There wasn't going to be a honeymoon.

The wedding was going to be something small and private, twenty-five people crowded into Meredith's house, and a dress that wasn't white or cream or anything that could be mistaken for traditional.

Fifteen minutes before showtime she left through the back door.

 

 

-

 

 

"You weren't there," she means at Meredith's for the wedding. She can account for the names and faces of everyone she's just left with a mix of shock and, for some, a cruel kind of déjà vu; Alex is a loose end.

"I skipped out on the last one too," he replies, rather flippantly. His voice sounds farther away than it is in the busy lobby. "I'm not big on weddings."

As it turns out, neither is she. She won't be seeing if the third time is the charm. "How did you know I was here?"

"I guessed."

"Why did you come?"

"Apparently I'm pretty lucky tonight."

 

 

-

 

 

She left her cell phone on the counter at a gas station in California.

By the time she realized it, she'd put forty-five minutes between her and it and she couldn't even remember the name of the place, so she just kept going.

Her voicemail was registering as full by then anyway.

 

 

-

 

 

Cristina digs the room key out of her pocket.

"I'm going upstairs," she says, no ceremony to the words, just fact. She doesn't invite him to follow but she isn't surprised when he ends up next to her in the elevator, her finger on _21_. The doors close and it's just theirs for the duration of the ride.

She leans back against the wall and he fumbles what she initially thinks might be his car keys and turns out to be his wallet. Checking for something that must be there because it ends up back in his pocket, a note of reassurance in his movements.

"If you're looking to blow your money, you're heading the wrong way." Alex glances over at her like he can't possibly imagine what gave her that idea. They're in _Vegas_. She shrugs. "You said you were lucky."

There's a glimpse of a smirk. "And now I'm testing that theory."

 

 

-

 

 

There's a part of her that wonders if Meredith knows where she is because Alex does.

She's never been sure where his loyalties lie, just that they're loosely connected to a group that involves her, involves Meredith, involves a rotating cycle of people that leave and come back and leave again – Izzie, George, Lexie, people they fuck, people they marry, people they almost marry.

For sure there's a common denominator to be found – she's just never sure if it's plural or not.

 

 

-

 

 

"I'm not going to sleep with you."

"I didn't ask."

"And yet you checked your wallet for condoms."

"It's not really hard to get laid here."

The elevator dings.

She levels her gaze at him, and then steps out. So does he.

"Well you're not doing it in my room."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

 

 

-

 

 

There's a single king bed in the room, with more pillows than she needs for three of them, and a minibar that she wouldn't touch with someone else's credit card.

She slips inside of the bathroom to change into something she hadn't driven in for hours on end and somewhere in between the rush of the running water in the sink and her brief experimentation with the whirlpool tub, the door must open and close.

When she steps back into the bedroom, she's alone.

 

 

-

 

 

In the hospital, she was the first thing he saw when he woke up. She had on clean clothes and her blunt nails had scratched thin lines on the face of some A-List star on the cover of the magazine she'd been half reading since she sat down.

Alex groaned, but there was a breathing tube and that was the extent of his protest.

"Don't you fucking die on us," was the first thing she said, a warning that managed to come out just as cutting as she'd envisioned it. Then, "Also, it's about time you woke up."

 

 

-

 

 

Half an hour later, Alex shows up with tequila.

She could've kissed him.

(She doesn't.)

 

 

-

 

 

"Why did you leave?"

Cristina furrows her brow at him, sprawled out diagonal along the bed, his body a perfect parallel to hers, only in reverse. His head is at the foot of the bed, her back against the headboard.

"Dude, even I went through with it."

The question rolls past off tongue before she even knows she's going to ask it, "Do you regret it?"

"Yeah," and it isn't the answer she expected she'd get but it is the truthful one. It's certainly the ugly one and she knows him well enough to know when he's bullshitting.

She could just leave it at that. She could remind him that you lead by example and she's seen too many people go down this road and wish they hadn't. She could also call it a night, kick him out, wallow in her own misery until she passes out.

It's just that Cristina's never sure about anything but what she _doesn't_ want and all of those possibilities don't set quite right.

"I ripped my dress and told Meredith I was going to go try and fix it."

He nods slowly, as the implication sets in. "And then you left."

"And then I left."

She empties her glass and goes for a refill.

 

 

-

 

 

She wakes up around three in the morning in the same place.

Alex murmurs in his sleep and on the way back from the bathroom she kicks some of the pillows that now litter the floor over to the foot of the bed, to cushion his fall should he decide to do the unwise thing and turn over in his sleep.

And then she goes back to sleep.

 

 

-

 

 

His hangover ends up worse than hers but neither of them pukes, which is nice considering the sound the toilet makes when it flushes.

In the early afternoon, when her headache's subsided and her stomach's settled she gets back in her car and just drives. Road signs and a cheap map she picked up from some vendor leads her into the mountains and she drives around until she's had her fill of the scenery and cleared her head.

Alex isn't in the room when she gets back but she doubts he's gone far.

 

 

-

 

 

Twice she contemplates calling Meredith.

Twice she hangs up before she's even finished dialing the number.

She ends up calling Callie from a pay phone so that the hotel's name doesn't register on the caller ID.

"I told him he should probably move his stuff out," the other woman says, with all the confidence in the world that she made the right call.

"Don't tell him I called."

"Wouldn't dream of it. He's pretty pissed at me." The perky chime of Arizona's voice is audible in the background but she's hoping conversations had between roommates stay that way. "Oh, your new friend at the gas station in Oakland is sending your phone back."

"Thanks," she says, because she can't think of anything else, and then hangs up.

 

 

-

 

 

It's ten-thirty before Alex knocks on her door.

"Found anyone with low enough standards to sleep with you?"

"Maybe."

 

 

-

 

 

For awhile after they released him from the hospital, he took pills. Every four hours. If he took anything else – and she isn't ruling that out – she didn't want to know about it.

He dumped the remaining contents of the bottle down the sink when his brother pulled up outside of Meredith's house again, one bright morning, and never touched them again.

The action told her a lot more about his past than he ever had.

 

 

-

 

 

In the shower, she slips a hand between her thighs and doesn't think of anyone at all.

 

 

-

 

 

"Are you going back to him?"

"You know, you really can speak girl." She flips channels on the television, if only to keep her hands occupied, away from the rest of the tequila that sits on the desk in one corner of the room. "And I can't. So that presents a problem."

"Fuck you," he replies but he hasn't so much lifted a finger in her direction in the past forty-eight hours and that's more concerning to her than she wants to admit.

"You almost fell off the bed last night."

"I know."

"If you shower, you can sleep in the bed."

She doesn't ask how long he's staying; he'll leave when she does.

 

 

 

-

 

 

There is warm breath on the back of her neck and a hand that spans her abdomen when she wakes up.

It's not an accident of sleep, of proximity and the natural need to seek out other bodies. His hand seeks lower and she stirs, turns so she's face to face with him and he has no choice but to withdraw his hand.

"What are you doing?"

He kisses her, smirks against her mouth, and she lets him. He slides a hand up along her inner thigh, slow, lazy trail, and she lets him. He attempts to pin her to the bed and she uses the element of surprise to get him on his back, her knees at his waist.

"Couldn't find anybody?" She asks.

"I think I just did."

She slides her hips back and he squirms underneath her and she smiles. "Your bedside manner could use some work."

"You're one to talk."

And she is. So she doesn't.

 

 

-

 

 

When she takes off the next night, splashes water on her face and pulls on her jeans over the faint red-purple fingerprints on her hips, she shoves a note under his car keys.

 _Go home_ , is all it says.

 

 

-

 

 

She'd asked Owen to marry her.

High on life and relief – and fear and adrenaline that tasted like acid in her mouth and along the back of her throat – and he'd said yes, without reservation.

Maybe she left because of that. Because he didn't lay hands on her and tell her they'd talk about this later, even though they were standing in a hospital that wasn't theirs and her scrubs still carried traces of the blood of her friends and co-workers.

The reasons don't matter anyways. None of it does.

The only part that's going to matter in the long run is her tire tracks leading out of the driveway and down the coast.

 

 

-

 

 _fin._


End file.
